


Ten To Midnight

by teyla



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, General, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-21
Updated: 2008-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teyla/pseuds/teyla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A birthday fic originally written for Euclase, starring unicorns and quantum physics. And a megaphone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten To Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> **Beta**: Alex51234, Svanderslice

When the Doctor entered the TARDIS kitchen that morning, Donna wasn't around.

That wasn't unusual; she was an early riser according to human standards, but she did require more rest than the ninety minutes the Doctor spent napping most nights. He turned on the kettle and opened the cupboard door above it, trying to decide what flavour tea to make.

When someone suddenly grabbed his shoulder, fingers digging into the skin, he let out a surprised yell and pulled away. "What?" He spun around. "Who's there?"

The kitchen was still as empty as it had been just a moment ago.

The Doctor reached behind himself, curling his fingers around the counter top. His gaze trailed over the empty room. "Who are you? How'd you get in?"

The room stayed quiet. The Doctor slowly reached for his inner jacket pocket, intending to get the sonic screwdriver. Before he could do so, though, something grabbed his hand. He jumped backwards, but succeeded only in bumping painfully into the kitchen counter. "What -"

The fingers that had grasped his hand--he couldn't see them, but he could feel that it were fingers, four fingers and a thumb, arranged like a human's--didn't let go, and instead started to guide his hand upwards.

Some of the wariness left him, and he started to feel intrigued. "Who are you?" he asked again. "Is there anything I can -" He broke off.

What he was feeling under his fingers, what the hand that had grabbed him had guided him to, was a face. A human face. He stretched his fingers, carefully probing and feeling, and his index finger brushed over a cheekbone, accidentally touching one of the psychic connection points.

There was a flash in his mind and he jerked his hand back. "_Donna_?"

No answer, but a second later the hand--a woman's hand, _Donna's_ hand--grabbed his own again, and not-too-gently guided him back to her face. This time, when his fingers touched the sensitive nerve endings it was no coincidence, and the message he received was loud and clear.

_WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?_

__He physically recoiled from the force of the unspoken question, but his fingers stayed in place, the mental connection unbroken. The Doctor hastily gathered up his mental shielding, which he usually didn't bother with when there were no other telepaths around, and shifted his fingers a little, stabilizing the link and reaching out with his mind.

_I can't see you! Are you okay?_

_Could have said something saw myself in the mirror I was talking not saying a word you were kidding or something not like it's completely mad -_

_Try one thought at a time, Donna. I can't understand you like this._

__The hectic jumble that was Donna's thoughts evened out a little. The Doctor waited, trying not to broadcast while she was sorting out her thought processes.

_What's going on, Doctor? Why didn't you notice me?_

__The Doctor, instead of explaining, sent her an image of the empty kitchen he'd seen before.

_But I was sitting right there at the table!_

_I couldn't see you. Still can't, as a matter of fact. You're invisible._

__There was a moment of radio silence, and although the Doctor couldn't see Donna's face, he could very well picture the various expressions she was going through at the moment. When she spoke up, the exasperation in her mental voice didn't fall short of her real voice in any way. _You have _got_ to be kidding me._

-###-

A trip to the control room and a scan with the screwdriver later, the Doctor concluded that Donna's condition must have resulted from a partial temporal shift of her body mass. When he told her this, she projected an air of annoyed confusion.

_A partial temporal what? What's that supposed to mean?_

_Basically, all of the molecules in your body got shifted a millisecond out of sync with the rest of the universe,_ the Doctor explained. _They're not far enough in the future to make you lose solidity, but they're not in the here and now enough to block the light from falling through you._

__An image of a sheet of tracing paper held against a bright light appeared in Donna's mind, and the Doctor nodded. _Something like that._

_But why can't I talk?_

_You are talking. Just a little too early for me to hear it. _Suddenly, he remembered something and dropped his hands, the psychic connection cutting off with a startling jerk. "I've got something for you!"__

__He couldn't hear Donna say anything--obviously--but she didn't try to physically stop him, so he assumed she was if not agreeing, then at least intrigued. Hooking his fingers around the metal braces, the Doctor pulled up one of the floor grates, and after some rummaging around, he found what he'd been looking for.

"There you go!" he said, straightening up and holding out the megaphone in the rough direction where he thought Donna should be. "That should do the trick."

He could feel her fingers brush against his as she took the megaphone from him, and then he watched the gadget floating in mid-air, ascending a little as she raised it to her lips. It hovered in the air for a moment; then the green power indicator lit up.

". . . good's a megaphone gonna do?"

Donna's voice was probably being amplified to a deafening volume, but all the Doctor got to hear was the echo it produced. He clapped his hands together in delight. "Brilliant! Now we can talk!"

". . . of all, tell me what caused this!"

At the urgency in her voice, the Doctor quickly sobered up. "As I said, it was a partial temporal shift -"

". . . have this without the space talk? What caused this shift?"

The Doctor pursed his lips and slid his hands into his pockets. "I can't say. Those shifts, they're like earthquakes, you see? Unpredictable, and usually harmless, except for, well, some rare cases. Like yours."

". . . do we reverse it?"

The Doctor scratched the soft skin behind his ear and frowned. "Hm, that might turn out to be a bit tricky."

-###-

One of the benefits of living in a spaceship with practically unlimited space was that you could afford to have a huge, extensive library. The Doctor spent the rest of the morning poring over every quantum mechanics book he'd found in the physics section. Well, except the one he'd picked up on Klom. Everyone knew that you couldn't trust Klom physics.

"Partial temporal shifts--they're like unicorns, you know?" he explained to Donna, who had sat down on the sofa when they'd come here and, according to the dents in the upholstery, hadn't moved since. "Everybody knows they exist, but nobody actually accepts it as a fact. And as with unicorns, there are a lot of myths about partial temporal shifts, so you have to be careful what to believe. The alleged affinity of unicorns to women, for example, is complete nonsense. Ask any half-way competent biologist, and they will tell you that unicorns don't distinguish by gender, but that they simply distrust anyone who is taller than five feet three. Some theorize that this is because unicorns don't like being looked down upon, but I've seen unicorns that stood sixteen hands or more, so that's probably a myth as -"

The echoing sound of Donna's megaphone-enhanced voice interrupted him. ". . . octor?"

He looked up. "Yes?"

". . . shut up."

He blinked; then nodded once. "Sure. Um. Sorry."

Silence prevailed while the Doctor continued to search through the books. Finally, in a volume titled '_Your Quantum and You_' that he'd purchased many, many years ago on some nameless planet in the Eridani system, a paragraph caught his eye.

"Yes!" He looked up and grinned. "I think I may have found something!"

As he read on, his eyebrows drew together. "Oh, but. . . oh." He cleared his throat. "You're not going to like this, I'm afraid."

-###-

"So, how come you even _have_ a mud bath on this spaceship of yours?"

They were back in the TARDIS kitchen, Donna sitting across from the Doctor, very much solid and visible again. They each had a mug of steaming tea in front of them, and there were still a few tiny bits of Fernolian moss stuck in Donna's hair. The Doctor thought to himself that the intense green punctuated the colour of her hair in a lovely way, but knew that if he told her so, she would probably disagree. He simply gave a shrug instead. "I don't know. I actually think it was in the original room setup. I've had it for a while, anyway, because I remember Romana enjoying it a lot."

"Romana, eh?" Donna sipped her tea. "I always thought mud baths were for either old people or horny young couples on their honeymoon."

"Well, Romana and I -" The Doctor caught himself when he registered Donna's overly casual tone a second too late, and quickly cleared his throat. "Anyway, good thing I hadn't already thrown out that moss supply. Fernolian moss is hard to get, especially in that quantity."

Donna snorted. "I still can't believe it--a time-bending plant. That planet must be a warped place."

"It's rather beautiful, actually. We should go there one of these days."

"Some other time, maybe. For now, I think I've had quite enough of moss and mud and plants and water." She wrinkled her nose in exaggerated disgust, and the Doctor grinned.

"How about sapphire waterfalls?"

"Say what?"

"Waterfalls made entirely out of sapphires." Donna's eyes widened, and the Doctor's smile broadened. "No plants, no moss, no mud. Just sapphires and diamonds, sparkling under rays of extonic sunlight. How's that sound?"

Donna answered his smile with a grin of her own, the old excitement lightening up her eyes. "I say it sounds like a plan."


End file.
